e to this land from the Occident (although
they do not know who they were nor how they came) is in accord with
what Padre Torquemada says in his Monarquia Indiana. (Lib. iii, cap.
13.) This is, That the Teochichimecas, after that terrible battle with
the Huexotzincas, remained lords of the territory of Tlaxcalan, and
made peace with the other nations on account of the fame of that
victory of theirs. These Teochichimecas must needs found their towns
and distribute their lands in such a manner that they were constantly
increasing their power and gradually occupying the country in such a
way that in a little more than 300 years they had spread through the
greater part of New Spain from one coast on the North to the other on
the South, a territory which includes all the inland regions which are
to the East, and especially those of this province of Yucathan as far
as the province of Hibueras or Honduras. From this it seems that the
Yucatecs are descended from Chichimec and Aculhua families which,
coming from the West by way of the stopping-places told of by Father
Torquemada in his first books, settled New Spain.

"If from the Orient came other peoples who settled in this land, there
is among the people now there neither tradition nor writing telling
with certainty from whence they came nor what people they were,
although, however, it is said (by some) that they came from the Island
of Cuba. Difficulty arises now, for some came from some regions and
others from very different ones, yet all speak a very ancient tongue,
nor has there been any information saying that any other has existed in
the land. But this might have been occasioned by some tribes being more
numerous than others, or by reason of war, or by trade and
communication which, by strengthening the relations of the one race
with the other, may have caused the idiom, usages, and customs of those
who were of the greatest number to prevail over and obliterate those of
the less numerous people. From the very differences which exist between
the Yucatec tongue and the Mexican, it seems that the Settlers of this
land must have been they who came from the East; and they may even have
been the most ancient people since the Indian Zamna who came with them
was he who first gave names to the places and lands, as has been told
already, for if the others had been the first, they would have done so.
Padre Lizana says the opposite because, first calling attention to the
fact that